POETIC JUSTICE

I AM NOT AFRAID

2009-07-23T23:48:00.043-05:00

*English translation of the video
Open [+/-]

I am not afraid.

I am not afraid if in the turmoils of these conspicuous times I will be accused of conspiracy.

I am not afraid to be accused of stirring unrest, but you cannot deny that I am a mother; not only the mother of "Tandis & Baran" [refering to her daughter Baran Kowsari], but also the mother of all that youth who has been witnessing their own mothers through the windows of my films; mother of "Touba", "Gilaneh", "Forough", "Narges", "Seema" and ... [names of female protagonists of her films]

I am the mother of all those who have opened their homes to me; who have told me their suppressed pains of years, such that I can depict their life sufferings on film.

Out of respect for the trust of all my audience, I feel entitled to the right of seek justice for all these mothers who, in the chaos of this crisis, are helpless and vulnerable, either having lost their children, or frantically and frightened seek the missing ones in the four corners of the city. [I feel entitled] to writing this open letter to say that no law, no concern, and no politics justify the pain they are suffering.

In a condition that no media is there to report the truth and no official takes the responsibility of helping the killer anxiety of these parents, how can we not tremble on every rumor of the torture of killing of a young son or daughter?

Give my camera a break to provide you a naked picture, perhaps you do not know what is really happening under the skin of the city.

___________________________________________________________________________________

*And here is a translation of her first public statement on this matter:
Open [+/-]

We are documentary filmmakers.

Our job is to uncover and express truth. expressing truth from several points of view. In the events of the past few days, by hiding reality, the national media is making it impossible for the members of the society to have access to the reality.

We are documentary filmmakers, our job is communication.

Iranian national TV belongs to the whole of the country and is obliged to reflect the opinions and the events of society, hence it must not be the mouth peace of a specific faction and exclude a large portion of the society.

We are documentary filmmakers, and our job is art, committed to culture and the language of our country. Reporting language has to be the guardian of the dignity of the nation. By censoring, spinning and using an inappropriate reporting languahe, the national TV has on the one hand, made lying a norm in the society, and on the other uses disrespectful language against people and in so doing provokes people into chaos and revolt.

We warn you that at the current inflamed situation, depriving the society from ability from peaceful expression of their demands draws the society into violent reactions in people who prior to election were expressing their opinions on their favorite candidates, peacefully side by side.

We warn that these actions [of the national TV, Seda o Seema] lead to violence and unrest and makes them liable for any massacre and chaos in the society and endangers a country that if guaranteed of justice, can reach a true national unity.

Every single one of these people, in every single day of every single year of the past 30 years have been compassionate to each other's sorrow and happiness. They have fought next to each other and have given martyrs and victims.

We are a people of thousand years of history. We are all together, we all share the history of this land.
Don't break us apart!
June 16, 2009
Translated from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2VFBWRJfAQ

________________________________________________________

~thepoetryman's ode, The Sword of Damocles, to the Iranian people~

The demoralizing phantom holding the cudgel can strike us
Like a rapist would, or screech like an injured swine,
Or reflect our disgraced and beaten will, as the ghouls have.
The vapors cannot cleave from our hearts our children’s dawn
Or their passion, tendered willingly as falling rain from heaven,
Like Gibran’s silver thread’s fetching them laughter in front of misery.

They are the heirs, the warriors to lift Damocles’ blade from the sky and
Mightily point it as proof they’ll not breathe another minute next to fear.
They will evermore admonish the failing ghosts of this day’s shadow
And fend off the hounds of cruelty with the strength they’ve resurrected.
There will be no reason to shrink from this; their destiny; they’ve seen her
Floating over their heads, grace and harmony hanging by a thread.

© 2009 mrp/thepoetryman

The Sword of Damocles

Bloggers of Iran

Tip of my hat to Naj
for her wonderful post on
Mrs Rakshan Bani-Etemad...

SHACKLES OF IRON...

2009-07-18T20:19:00.008-05:00

On June 7th, 2008 Sarah Palin interrupted her schedule of state business and spent Alaska state taxpayer money to fly down from Juneau to the Mat-Su Valley where she attended on June 8th two religious events dominated by the Wasilla Assembly of God, which is demonstrably Palin's key Alaska church.

At the end of one those events, young adults in a church Palin had attended for over two decades were presented with Samurai swords. "Warriors of old were considered undressed if they were without their sword... Swords were worn in service to the lord of the realm. Some of the most renounced swordsmen were the Samurai," intoned a church member officiating the sword ceremony, who then quoted Psalms 149 verses 6-9:
"May the praise of God be in their mouths and a double edged sword in their hands to inflict vengeance on the nations, and punishment on the peoples, and to bind their kings with fetters, their nobles with shackles of iron, and to carry out the sentence written against them."

Better to have given them muskets
knowing more of their use than the sword.
Should have given them a rifle
having witnessed how they can persuade.
Better to have given them tanks
so they could flatten the dying to ashes.
Should have given them grenades
to lob into the center of a growing crowd.

Better to have given them truth
to plunge inside their own empty spirit...

THE LIMBAUGH PRINCIPLE

2009-06-30T23:16:00.012-05:00

Rush Limbaugh Compares Al Franken's Win to the Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Vote Recount

(A Poetic Justice Photomontage)

O! From the foul wind blowing over America
Comes this; a most colossal whore’s voice
Screeching another miserably worn-out minute!

The irony of his deception belies an ignoble aim
Leaving fools ready to lop off someone’s head
As the mythic shit-stain spews forth tired claims.

He is no one’s god but his sheep. No precision
Within his words, just fuel for agitation
For a weak-willed herd of unconscious ovine.

Let us not mistake his voice, his words for courage or fact;
Let us bend his insensitive language into the brave light
And watch the drip, drip, drip of uncontrolled lies retract.

O he is most foul and undoubtedly in need of an outfit;
A tall hat, bow tie, long shoes, red nose and a wig;
So, what he says is seen for what it is- a load of shit!

© 2009 mrp/thepoetryman

FATHER AND TIME

2009-06-21T01:12:00.004-05:00

It is a wise father that knows his child.
__William Shakespeare

All the clocks that surround us mark off moments as they dissolve;
Steady drum of the second hand tick tocks like a time bomb,
Vanished down beneath the rising rush
Cast outside of reach of all that’s here
Or that frantic hands can seize or bear.

Like time, we will travel forward as moments become lean and swift,
Instances slipped within pale snapshots; smiles of odd, uneasy faces.
Tick tock goes the gesture, the nod.
Plunging seconds speed by exhausted
Below the pitch-black lather of time.

As summers own swimming and winter’s trudging speed through
Second hands rush on, prying the next season to scuttle forth.
Does it matter more what time it was
Or more that a moment’s remembered;
Vanished, frantic, outside of my reach?

All of the clocks shrug at this; my yearning to paint my father true,
To prevent time’s rolling course upon scatty legs made of seconds.
Cease your lean and speedy march.
If I’m to know him, you've got to stop,
Time, before you run out of clock.

© 2009 mrp/thepoetryman

REVISITING A MANIACAL MELODY

2009-06-14T23:07:00.002-05:00

CIA chief believes Cheney almost wants U.S. attacked

O! Love at first sight in bleak day.
You’ve life’s gallant sun.
The arid tempest swoons;
Love. Hope. Joy. Doubt. Lust. Slaughter.
Blood’s staining authority.
The silver gorge croons to her,
Breathing deep, conjuring worship;
The grubby toothed grin of casualty.

“My love, may I have this dance?”
“Tis my honor most valiant knight!”
“Take my hand, my dear, and we shall.”
“Yes, my love.”

O! Life’s embittered perfection,
Love’s wish filled stain,
Let go this; your dreadful date
And curl your arms `round eternity
Heeding the smothered breath of thy god;
Hatred. Contempt. Red. White. Blue.
Blood’s staining authority;
The solvent spirit’s bloody weight!

© 2006 mrp/thepoetryman

THE CLEAN SKIN...

2009-06-13T15:53:00.001-05:00

More than some ashen membrane
Are the clean skin.
Tell me what they are?
Oh! How beautiful are these alien creatures!

They move with the wind
Under cover of night and sun.
Glowing and graceful they progress
Nearer my tenuous fear.

Seen and unseen,
Like I’ve just exited some dark room;
Under the sun everyone’s a ghost.

Phantoms, whose faces are washed away,
And whose hands are sickly white,
Blanched from unredeemed horrors,
Stand now, drumming rigid fingers
Across the consciousness
Under my clean skin.

© 2007 mrp/thepoetryman

WHAT IF...

2009-06-13T02:43:00.003-05:00

...2009...
Imagine life under these conditions: Living in limbo under a foreign occupier. Having no self-determination, no right of return, and no power over your daily life. Being in constant fear, economically strangled, and collectively punished.

Having your free movement denied by enclosed population centers, closed borders, regular curfews, roadblocks, checkpoints, electric fences, and separation walls. Having your homes regularly demolished and land systematically stolen to build settlements for encroachers in violation of international law prohibiting an occupier from settling its population on conquered land.

Having your right to essential services denied - to emergency health care, education, employment, and enough food and clean water.

Being forced into extreme poverty, having your crops destroyed, and being victimized by punitive taxes. Having no right for redress in the occupier's courts under laws only protecting the occupier. Being regularly targeted by incursions and attacks on the ground and from the air.

Being willfully harassed, ethnically cleansed, arrested, incarcerated, tortured, and slaughtered on any pretext, including for your right of self-defense. Having no rights on your own land in your own country for over six decades and counting. Vilified for being Muslims and called terrorists, Jihadists, crazed Arabs, and fundamentalist extremists. Victimized by a slow-motion genocide to destroy you.

According to Israeli historian Ilan Pappe, Israel has conducted state-sponsored genocide against the Palestinians for decades and intensively in Gaza. In a September 2006 Electronic Intifada article titled "Genocide in Gaza" he wrote: "A genocide is taking place in Gaza....An average of eight Palestinians die daily in the Israeli attacks on the Strip. Most of them are children. Hundreds are maimed, wounded and paralyzed. (It's become) a daily business, now reported (only) in the internal pages of the local press, quite often in microscopic fonts. The chief culprits are the Israeli pilots who have a field day," like shooting fish in a barrel. Why not, they're only Muslims, so who'll notice or care.

What if war were just a chaotic dress rehearsal in a school play
and torture were long philosophical conversations with idiots,
bullets, tiny bits of lint culled from laughing soldier's uniforms,
fighter jets, kites dropping from the shoulders of the sun,
warships, marshmallows floating in a sea of hot chocolate,
and tanks, funny little cars full of tumbling clowns?

O! If only it were so then all of the world's hideous warmongers might be
paper dolls in rooms full of beautiful children, each with a pair of scissors...

PLAY FROM YOUR HEART

2009-06-12T00:30:00.009-05:00

-Zoe Keating @ La Boule Noire Paris Oct 23, 2008/Amanda Palmer cabaret show.

Play from your heart

What's the point of anything if you don't?
What’s to stop us from staying in the middle
While hate’s tangled up in a half-baked peace
And love’s tapping out some half-hearted beat?

Love’s not a liquid flowing between worlds-
It’s now!
It’s the curve of her neck as she turns to gaze at her children.
It’s the teetering laughter heard over the howl of thankless men.

Love’s useless if it only moan’s like a lamb-
It’s loud!
It’s the whispered roar of goodnight as he watches them sleep.
It’s the fearless torrent of immeasurable expressions of grief.

It’s not war… It’s peace.

WHO AM I AND WHERE ARE WE GOING?

2009-06-10T23:51:00.002-05:00

I was visiting an old friend, Graeme, on the net yesterday (Facebook) and he introduced me to the singer, Chocolate Genius and his song, "My Mom". I was very moved by the song and my muse began to scream, as she's in the habit of doing. Hours later, the next day, I was driving into town and listening to my Bright Eyes disc "I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning" track #1- "At the Bottom of Everything" and my muse began screaming in my ear that this was the song I was to use in combination with "My Mom" as inspiration to write a poem for Alzheimers and peace. Enjoy...

(Video thanks to Graeme of Left in East Dakota)

We’re free and brave and we act as if we’re going to a party on the sun,
An all night party with the moon, the clouds, the planets and our guns…

We act like we’re going to a ball with all the amenities of wealth.
We act as if we’ve got it made- Got our money and our health.
We act as if we’re not suffering and not causing anybody harm
When, truth be told, we’ve got it all so completely, sadly wrong.

We are spoiled rotten and we’re set, so deeply set within our ways,
And we’ll not change a thing until we've killed all the Arabs and the gays…

We mustn’t look down our noses while snorting oil and hurling down abuse
The planet will look as if it’s square and that there’s nothing here to lose.
We think so much of ourselves and we still pat one another on the back,
“We’re number one” runs through our heads but that train is off its tracks.

Make amends while we can and we’ve a chance to save our multi-colored skins.
I say we make it right while we can still recall the names of family and friends…

It’s fleeting, life and all it holds, and can be taken one stem cell at a time;
One transitory instant we exist and in the next we unexpectedly decline.
I say we make the most of what we’ve got riding on this, our grateful life,
Let’s break down the walls of freedom and have the world over for a night.

Let’s bring our laughter and affection and leave all weapons locked away
And just move and laugh and breathe as one and never break away…

We must take hold of this moment and let it swell, let it open deep inside.
We must liberate all the innocents now before one more’s allowed to die.
We must settle our past dues with people we’ve hurt and we’ve wronged.
We must live, we must live, we must live, we must live like we belong…

© 2009 mrp/thepoetryman

(The poem's rhythm could somewhat follow the tune below if it were to be sung...)

LONG AND BROKEN TEETH

2009-06-08T00:46:00.002-05:00

Name That Racist Tune With Daniel Carver
-Caution: Disturbing racist slurs and language throughout video-

Hat Tip to We are Respectable Negroes-

“Now he knows what the “n” word means.”
She bellowed through discolored teeth,
Her vinegar lips pursing upon the dank breath of morning
As foul old men slurred about guns and their prideful obligation,
“To use `em when times call or when we damn well please!”

“Around here we looks out for our own, if you know what I mean?”
Her words slapped against the men’s droll bones;
They all got a healthy chuckle from her chattering slabs and
Pretended they weren’t scared, tiny, frightened men snorting fear.
“They ain’t supposed to come o’ lootin’ when water’s a risin.”

Everywhere the same; old white men selling out for dread,
Spitting demise through long and broken teeth, faded of affection
Or familiar threads of explanation for tongue-tied unkindness.
“Hell! Ya gotta protect yourself. They’s in the wrong neighborhood.”
Fusty gangs of bitter men hell-bent on bleeding out the world!

This is the time for hoping, for loving,
The time for reaching one another, believing
While the water’s drowning all belief!
Yes! Now’s the time for considering another
Even if all it ever proves is that we’re worth saving!

“We ain’t afraid to shoot em when they comes `round here!”
She splattered through her yellowed flapping maw.
The foul-smelling men sniggered away another minute;
It never occurred to them that the weight of fear and hatred
Was sure to sink them when next the waters come o’ lootin’...

Levees.Org

BROKEN

2009-06-06T23:51:00.003-05:00

(A Poetic Justice Photomontage)

U.S. contractors held in Green Zone killing
Iraq suicide attack kills man, hurts police chief

War concludes, piercing the proof of silence;
Influence spent, the station of splendor set,
Undressed in stillness; an ambush on our union.

But let’s not paint the words; let us just say it-
War, for the warrior, never ends.
War, for the dead, lives on without them.
War outlives our marriage to grief.

Grief, then, outlasts the lover’s ceremony.
It beats it back,
Rupturing it with devoted impatience,
Drowning it under earth’s damp ground,
Like a monstrous wave unleashed by frail levee.

We sense the dark curve of evermore run screaming
Along the edge.

Not many could keep on in this perilous wave,
No love, no devotion, no vigor, no union,
None, save for war…

Effects of Iraq War on American Citizens

Progressive.org - Broken by This War

MAKESHIFT PYRE

2009-06-05T02:08:00.009-05:00

Daniel James Murray Charged With Making Threats Against Obama In Utah
Federal prosecutors have charged a man with making threats against President Barack Obama after he allegedly told a bank employee in Utah he was on a mission to kill the president.

Johnny Bounds at 11:00pm May 31 Facebook
“THE LAST MAN NAMED HUSSEIN THAT MESSED WITH THIS COUNTRY WAS HUNG IN PUBLIC, I SAY WE KEEP THE STREAK ALIVE"

Slithering under the boards that are used to construct the coffins
you move with the coldness of such loathing; your countenance,
that of confusion, a beast without an alternative to its actions,
plans that hold no magic or beauty or love. You cannot rest. Your
rage finds its way over the cold floor, which is little comfort for
a mind as destructive as it is empty. You’re trapped under the heap
of your making; a makeshift pyre waiting on you to sleep, pausing
on the hatred to consume every pore until you destroy something.

You could have risen to change, to the worlds open arms, yet you chose
To accentuate the thing you knew would be your undoing; brutality.
There are many reasons to be angry; there are old men rotting in churches,
Turning the spoils of a god into riches, men and women waiting for the chance
To neglect a child, liars and thieves waiting for the dispossessed to fall to
Steal mere pennies that would better serve a wishing well than they, and
Then, there you are, slithering under the boards stacked for making coffins;
Living is a bitter pill lodged in your throat, death, a glass of water.

A Memorial Moratorium

2009-05-25T01:58:00.008-05:00

(A Poetic Justice Photomontage)

When this moment, this now tortured moment
Wraps talons `round our grave limbs…
This day floats down.

When our breath is burdened
Of a heart grown weak of dread
From skies tight with fuming planes
And steel beams bending from the sun…
This day floats down.

When grenades are tossed like flowers
So blooms might flourish in darkness…
This day floats down.

When our country begs for silence
Imploring peace to come head high...
This day floats down.

O Memorial Day should rise up
Bring us to a new battle, invigorate
The sense for peace with man’s daughter.
All of our arrogant and glowing murder...
This day floats down.

MEMORIAL WHISPER

2009-05-24T12:43:00.001-05:00

Memorial Day launched its whisper to the sky
and another lies in wait on the mountaintop
beneath the bleached mass of atonement.

O! I am determined by our failing
to nurture the patriot tree
until we can climb near to God!
Near enough to ask,
“Is this your desire?”...

Near enough so that the question
needn’t even be uttered,
just near enough
to see the river’s flow.

O! I am determined by our failing
to nurture this; our flag-waving heap
beyond the gaze of God!
Beyond the flow of the deity’s torrent!
Beyond this; our notion of existence!

Higher! O! Onward! Higher still!
Carry them aloft! Reverently lay these;
our strident armed forces of war and peace!
We can have it both ways you know;
write our storm’s name across the sky
and climb beyond the stare of God!

O! I am determined by our failing!
Indomitable of our worshipful peak!
Joy filled by our divine reaching
to build, amass, pile, mound, and stack!
We’ll have surpassed the mournful eyes
and soon be able to look down
upon the brazen head of God
and declare ourselves the victor!

O! I am determined by our failing
to nurture the patriot tree
until we can climb beyond God!
Higher! O! Onward! Higher still!

© 2006 mrp/thepoetryman

MOTHER'S OF THE EARTH… (an ode)

2009-05-10T10:00:00.004-05:00

I think of you as the founders of peace, limitless affection for children as you look upon your own and upon those outside of your arms reach.
(You would hold them, too,
Press the quivering child to your breast,
Conceal the innocent of any suffering or
War, away from the vile thievery of their soul.)

I think of mothers as the final resting place for all those exhausted of spirit; the displaced, the sick, the dying, as a warm respite for the bright eyed living.
(In Africa and Palestine yours is the voice of
What is possible; if it can be dreamed,
You seek out its thrumming center,
Stoking new belief and nurture what’s missing.)

I think of mothers as nothing short of absolute. Unwavering, boundless loyalty to an oft erratic planet. Devoted, not just to your own, but to all the earth’s offspring.
(Young and old, satisfied and hungry,
Glimmering of hope or faces beset by gloom;
The slums of Harlem, the streets of Sderot,
Woods of Kentucky, excavations of Tehrān.)

I think of you as the waters that course our common ground, warm winds that float in our dreams, the flowers. Women dangling love like necklaces.
(Women, whose hearts move with nature
And whose love lights the darkness
Of horror and the grim shadows of deceit,
From coast to coast and sea to shining sea.)

I think of you when madness grips my breathing, when the dreaded counting’s still afoot and the use of this world seems unwilling to wait. You stand at the rescuing door of cities that move deep from end to end of the sun.
(Your balance, undisturbed by fear,
Wrenches us to safety from ourselves
And from those that would usurp our affection.)

I think of mothers as the founders of peace, keepers of the entryway to love’s bosom. I celebrate you with words that fall short of your creed in mankind.
(I celebrate all women, for you are the harbors
Of our breathing, the beacons of our dreams,
The keepers of all children. You furnish us the
Much needed strength to resist the crow of failure.)

AN EQUATION OF WAR

2009-05-05T00:00:00.007-05:00

(A Poetic Justice Photomontage)

The Mathematics of War

Pulling raw numbers from the news, they plot the unnatural,
The storm of shock and awe’s modernity
As it moves across the sand-
Seeking answers within the whirl,
Clues of how to temper the foregone tempest.

Great numbers fall like the rain over their desire.
Urgency swoops in like waves.

This was long after the beast began to calculate;
Crack its first body.

At dawn, like Zeus tossing down thunder, the bombs fell.
They sliced open the sky with screaming,
Throwing flesh and bone
Where the people, of humanity’s cradle,
Stayed for death
Like necks waiting on a blade.

What could they do? They'd no power to foil it.
All they could do, all they could hope for
Was that the statistics missed them,
Skipped their final introduction,
Pythagoras moved blindly past them
And their quaking limbs.

They positioned themselves, set for death to greet them,
“Allahu Akbar” (God is great),
“P(x)=Cx –a” (probability)
Prepared to die unreasonably.

Numbers fell, adding skyward;
Constant data clutching a child's hand.

Sean Gourley on the Mathematics of War

A tip of the hat to Betmo of Life's Journey

SACROSANCT ABYSS

2009-05-04T00:00:00.001-05:00

How a Supreme Court Case Tore the Republican Party in Two
Paradox or Hypocrisy
Think You've Heard the Scariest Thing About Sarah Palin?

Men and women out of the flames ascend
Rising like the cold grey breath of winter,
Praising "God" and life and death.

Their bones clack to Armageddon’s rhythm,
Their eyes perceive the Day of Judgment
Looming steady the bitter death of man.

Where is this rising of thy god?
Is it manifest in the blue?
Famine?
War?
Does it tread `neath the surging wave?

O! Bring out thy god and quench this thirst!
Summon thy god and feed this starvation!

O! Call unto it!
Have it burst forth and save the children!

Magnificent are men and women,
Humankind;
Mortal creatures and our gods.

© 2007 mrp/thepoetryman

THE PERFECT STONE

2009-05-03T00:03:00.006-05:00

Gunman in Iraqi uniform kills 2 U.S. soldiers

When I first heard of our current war,
The occupation of Iraq,
I dug up a beautiful rock from my yard, a buried wish.

I picked it up out of the dirt,
Polished it vigorously
And held it up toward the bright midday sun.

I then observed the star
Rudely abandon my offering
And round up the clouds; his cheerless band of thieves.

I asked him why he was not pleased,
Wasn’t the rock pretty enough?
He just wrinkled his mug and stepped behind the haze.

I was hurt, but more determined,
I knew that war would incinerate the children;
Iraq’s pristine treasures hunkered down in trembling.

So I dug up another rock and another.
I dug until my fingers bled.
I dug at a furious pace; time was not on my side.

Soon I had three hundred rocks,
And no feeling in my hands.
Again I offered them to the veiled and sneering sun.

Again the superlative star mocked me,
And the clouds scoffed
Then commenced to spit upon my pleading expression.

So I dug and dug and dug.
I was a madman, digging up grass and flowers.
And, as I dug, the hovering mob threw down their noise.

Lightening struck now,
Yet I was determined to find the perfect stone,
I was digging for all the marbles; the kit and caboodle!

And, “CLANK”, there it was, a door.
A beautiful and brilliantly shining silver door;
A most curious thing to find buried beneath the yard.

The sun peaked through
Inquisitive of this amazing find,
Even the clouds ceased their scoffing and gathered near.

I banged the shovel down upon it
And a massive echo rumbled deep.
The blood from my hands dripped upon the silver frame.

I looked now to the sun,
“Is this magnificence enough?”
But before he could answer,
From under my feet, came a thunderous knock…

THE PLANTING SEASON

2009-05-01T20:34:00.005-05:00

3 US Troops Killed in Iraq Making April the Deadliest for US Troops in the Last 7 Months

We planted the seeds deep down
Counting the slain as we plowed
We can hardly recall
The first red memory of life,
But we remember this war’s dead
We recall the smell in spoiled air
Remember hearing,
“They will treat us as liberator”
And “It’ll be a cakewalk”,
And dreading the “WMD”…

Our garden has been planted
Like the tombs `round warfare
Gently lowering life’s seeds
Then off to dinner we traipse
And to pay our bills on time
While the listless screen blasts
Our hopes like beaten mongrels
Left to daydream in their slavery

Our plot has been planted
Like tombs `round warfare
Yet we’ve left an empty patch
For burying our greatest threat
A long swathe of evened thatch
Ready to balance out our debt
Prepared to plant, water, and grow
The resentment of our containment
To nurture a new hope and freedom
Counting the seasons as we go…

© 2008 mrp/thepoetryman

SHRILL LIGHTNING

2009-04-28T23:32:00.019-05:00

-Right Wing Extremists Blaming Latinos for Spreading Swine Flu Across Border
-Another Violent Right-Wing Extremist
-Think About it (Support the Mathew Shepard Act)
-Touché
-Team Sarah on the Attack
-The US and its ”Great” Leadership in Iraq
-It's an Insult to Suggest Veterans are Bias Crime Victims

I’m appalled by all this shrill lightning,
The stench of something reckless
Like an oven broiling millions
Whose only sin was
Their name.

And then the torture and this war
With its odor of deceit
Standing tall like a knife
Stuck in the back of God.

Do we not understand ourselves enough
To see it? We know the bat finds its prey
Sensing its victims echo as it flutters
In the shadow of self.
And, you and I, what do we feel?

AN ENDURING TORTURE

2009-04-25T01:16:00.013-05:00

(A Poetic Justice Photomontage)
“…Because they are soft. They are weak people compared to our military service people and they would crack under torture. But al Qaeda, people who have devoted their lives to destroying their enemy, the people are willing to die in their exercises, they were all willing to die on 9-11. Sean Hannity thinks torture is going to work on them because he has never, never known the kind of commitment that those people have and nothing he's done in his life measures that kind of commitment that the American military has or that our enemies have. Our enemies are more committed than Sean Hannity will ever be.” (Read More...)

…The golden-haired children seemed in their own peace filled world as
hungry giants walked heavily and with great anger over the wilderness…

In this tale of time, this poem, there’s not enough room for everyone to sit,
some will have to stand and merrily wait their turn at the gates of anguish.
Soon you will be able to taste what your sons and daughters have swilled-
your aunts and uncles, mothers and fathers, nieces and nephews; the sufferers.

Above our heads, even in anguish, rises a cry so profound that it must be a dream
of man’s making, a face filled with the delight of our trust, our love, our freedom.
Upon this blue throne we call earth, our collective heart moves freely among us,
yet our hands and feet trace drops of blood over this painting. We turn our
backs on the trees and the rivers and we beat down upon the soil with metal
drums of war. We long to conquer our immense fear of things outside of this air,
so demons claw at our bellies and slash at our throats to get a single breath of air
and a chance to speak with us, to tell us why we are a cheerless lot and to clarify,
explain to us our immeasurable and never-ending sorrow.

There are the screams of the oppressed, the cries of the starving offspring,
the tears of the childless mothers and fathers, and the beating of truth in each
of us. It’s never been outside of our reach. It has always been and will remain
within each of us, gestations of the human stain.

Open your mouth wide and bestow this birth to one another, our lone salvation,
our reckoning with truth and beast and the earth’s nectar. Celebrate kindness,
not its converse aberration, torture.
It is waiting upon our approval, nothing more and nothing less…

DEVIANT DREAMING

2009-04-15T00:41:00.022-05:00

(Via Ben Heine Art)Too dirty! Too ungodly!
Too iconic, like some unthinkable
Beast leaping out a child’s throat,
Wielding its claws as switchblades
(Or bullets or bombs),
Planting red lips upon the sleeping,
Bringing innocence to its knees.

Too much, God damn it!
Too rich! Too immeasurable
Like a pedophile’s rancid erection
Penetrating a child’s flaccid faith
Etched within youth’s center;
They’ll choose not to speak of it-
A secret... censored between fleshes.

A voice hollowed out,
Suppressed like a fearless work of art.
Too dirty! Too ungodly! Too iconic!
Who needs such art, such temptation?
(Flesh without cover)
Can’t have the commoners thinking such
Rigid ideas, might cause a mutiny…

Let us have cockle shells
And other silent dreamings;
Not essentials like art and reflection.
No! Too difficult! Too insurmountable;
A child’s dream or a mother’s breast.
Best keep such things under wraps,
Hidden where they belong.

Too filthy! Too profane!
Too iconic like some naughty child
Jumping out the belly of a beast,
Wielding his mind as a paintbrush
(Or a pen or a dance),
Moving his thoughts over the nobility
Bringing them to their knees.

© 2008 mrp/thepoetryman

Please visit Ben and show him your support.

DEPRAVITY

2009-04-14T12:47:00.003-05:00

Fas•cism (noun) [fa’ shizzem]
Authoritarian political ideology where all individual and societal interests are inferior to the needs of the state.

Come!
O ghosts of misery!
Louder than the whole of God,
more wordless than humiliation
breathing hard upon our backs!

Bring forth your most depraved army
over the present carnage of man;
red tongued and in the making!

Come quick under the roaring sky
and lock away hope
in your manifest gulag
of scraggly goddamned vultures!

Thrash all pleasure and goodness
over attentive hearts of dust!

Split the flesh and soul with your shadows!

Program our youth
to cleave all life of what’s left
as hordes of black-shirted assassins!

Keep watch over them
like steely eyed wolves
and stay their dissent with mild anecdote!
In time they’ll be content
to simply live another day
with wet tongue
and fearful consumption...

I detest with all my being that this pillaging horde of scoundrels (which includes Glenn Beck) has twisted the world into a sightless giant of shrieking hell!

© 2007 mrp/thepoetryman

FREEDOM...

2009-04-12T22:26:00.003-05:00

U.S. captain held by pirates rescued

Pakistan militants attack NATO supply trailers

U.S. general says Iraq attacks no reason to panic

Protesters Swarm Thai Capital

Saudi judge upholds marriage of 8-year-old

The freedom that he wanted couldn’t bring itself through the gates
So he imagined it pressing its paws to the soil beyond the walls,
That he heard it weeping plaintively just outside his tiny room.
Said he could smell it in the breath of every passing spring,
Spoke of its splendid dance waiting with shoes for his feet.
He said he'd heard its velvet voice flecking upon his ears
And that he tasted it in the warm water gracing his lips,
Yet the long shadows that stirred beneath his door
Startled him with their quick and brutal motions
And consoled him with torturous laughter.
They never once had spoken of freedom,
Made no mention of its demise.

...ILLUSTRATED...

2009-03-30T07:59:00.006-05:00

8 dead in nursing home shooting
-5-
U.S. deploys anti-missile ships before N.Korea launch
-4-
27 Killed as Gunmen Storm Police School in Pakistan
-3-
Key U.S. Allies Face Off in Iraq
-2-
Nixon, Khrushchev And A Story Of Cold War Love
-1-

Video from World War III Illustrated...

HIGH INTO THE MOIST AIR
the thread is now barren, too soon,
waving over the arid ground,
it splits again
and the cotton bleeds with the fallen lists of yon
giant horned butterflies swoop in with their drums
thrum-thrum-thrum, thrum-a-tum-tum
and the pageant fills the air in every city and the sky groans
thrum-thrum-thrum, thrum-a-tum-tum
the solemn horde stand in their mumble-stumble anthem
thrum-thrum-thrum, thrum-a-tum-tum
handkerchiefs are made handy for eyes dropping bombs in the dust
thrum-thrum-thrum, thrum-a-tum-tum
the holy alliance with the soil spilled long ago grows heavier still
thrum-thrum-thrum, thrum-a-tum-tum
soulless worms made of oil inch along in macabre silence
thrum-thrum-thrum, thrum-a-tum-tum
well dressed children stoop in slack-jawed bewilderment
thrum-thrum-thrum, thrum-a-tum-tum
a little boy is told to stop giggling this instant
thrum-thrum-thrum, thrum-a-tum-tum
the young lad won’t see that his laughter is out of order
thrum-thrum-thrum, thrum-a-tum-tum
and he notices all the solemn faces and bleeding cottons
thrum-thrum-thrum, thrum-a-tum-tum
and the giant horned butterflies beating their drums
thrum-thrum-thrum, thrum-a-tum-tum
the loudly torn anthem now stumbles to its horrid close
thrum-thrum-thrum, thrum-a-tum-tum
and the butterflies lift their drums high into the moist air
thrum-thrum-thrum, thrum-a-tum-tum
the sky tumbles down with a tyrant’s ferocity
thrum! thrum! thrum! thrum-a-tum-tum!
the pageantry is quickly called on account of rain
thrum! thrum! thrum! thrum-a-tum-tum!
and the little boy cries as the giant horned butterflies come crashing
THRUM! THRUM! THRUM! THRUM! THRUM!